The better your lawn is, the more you’ll enjoy taking care of it. A beautiful lawn is a pleasure because the work you put into it rewards you with a verdant carpet— the perfect setting for a house and garden.
The one shown here is the basis of an inspired landscape. The lawn’s smoothness and broadleaf evergreens contrast dramatically with the espalier plum trees.
The mediocre lawn is on the other side of the picture—what we have not shown graphically. The one that nags. What care you put into it is real or psychological pain in the back.
Move up to a perfect lawn. Organize. You can be calm about even the gigantic step from failure to triumph over a lawn.
First, Look at What You Have
If your lawn is anything less than what you’d like, decide what it lacks. Chances are, the man who owns the nicest lawn in your community would be glad to give you some on-the-spot advice.
Make a list, then follow it. To give you an idea, here is the plan I used to upgrade my bluegrass lawn this spring.
As the builder left the sod, it contained what I am sure is a better-than-average amount of bluegrass, but along with the desirable grass, there were undesirables (crab and foxtail), and a multitude of weeds including dandelions, plantains, and lespedeza.
Use Fertilizer
My plan: In early spring, apply fertilizer and a pre-emergent crabgrass killer; sow seed in thin and bare areas. I used a fertilizer with an analysis of 20% percent nitrogen, 10% percent phosphorus, and 5% percent potash and followed package directions.
The same morning, I gave bare spots a full rotation of seeds; thin areas received half to a third of the full rate. Also, the same day, I applied Halts, a chemical that kills crabgrass seeds before they sprout.
There are many such pre-emergents on the market, but this is the only one I know that claims to be safe for use at the same time a thin turf receives supplementary seeds.
Second Phase of Spring Upgrading
The second phase of my spring upgrading program came about a month after the first. Then, when the dandelions and other broadleaf weeds were in active growth, I made an application of granular 2,4-D.
The crabgrass killer which I used earlier contained enough chlordane to rid the lawn of grubs. If diseases were a problem, I would have applied a lawn fungicide such as Acti-dione-Thiram or Acti-dione-RZ during rainy weather, following package directions.
If chickweed, clover, or oxalis were inhabiting my lawn in large numbers, I would have applied a 2,4,5-T-based chemical in early spring. But, had this been necessary, I would have waited 30 days before sowing any seed.
Put Know-How To Work
Spurred on by the nearly three billion dollars Americans spent on lawn upkeep last year, lawn-supply houses are amid vast research programs. For example, grass seed mixtures are purer; better blended for your area.
Look for the Lawn Institute’s Seal of Approval when you buy lawn grass seed. Today’s fertilizers are more effective. The good ones release nutrients slowly over some time, thus giving steady grass growth instead of one big spurt.
We now know that a good lawn can be built with nothing more than subsoil combined with good seeds, moisture, sunlight, and regular applications of fertilizer. But, most remarkable of today’s lawn aids are the weed and disease control chemicals.
For example, you can kill a large population of weedy grasses in one application, leaving the desirable kinds unharmed.
Next come the mechanical devices that make lawn care pleasant.
Mowers are being made safer, quieter, and more efficient. Some battery-operated models available this year combine the quietness of an electric with the portable qualities of gasoline-powered kinds.
Sweepers enable you to pick up the clippings after mowing in a tenth of the time it would take to rake.
Lawn waterers range from underground sprinkling units which turn on and off automatically to small, simple kinds you operate by the amount of pressure from the water faucet; some spray square and rectangular patterns, others in circles.
Tools Increase Lawn Pleasure
Edgers and trimmers help achieve the lawn with a well-manicured look. Whether operated by a motor or your muscle power, these tools are constantly improved to increase your satisfaction in using them.
Caring for an Established Lawn
The better the care, the better the lawn, and vice versa. The care consists of regular mowing, feeding, watering, and weed control. Sometimes there are a few extra chores, such as raking, aerating, and controlling pests.
But the first step, upon which much else depends, is to do everything possible to keep the grass flourishing. You do this mainly by feeding.
To feed Northern grasses (bluegrass, bent, fescues), the easiest and best fertilizer to use is a dry chemical mixture high in nitrogen content with less phosphorus and potash. The kinds made for lawns are like this, with an analysis (printed somewhere on the bag) of something like 12-6-4.
This means 12% percent nitrogen, 6%percent phosphorus, and 4% percent potash, Again, the most important of these to your lawn is the percentage of nitrogen.
Feeding Northern Lawns
The lawn needs between three and four pounds of actual nitrogen per 1000 square feet each year. So, if it’s 12-6-4, the amount you need to use annually per 1000 square feet is about 80 pounds (12 percent of 30 equals 3.6 pounds of actual nitrogen).
You can put this on in three equal doses: one in early spring, one in late spring, and one in fall. But where summers get hot early, make the late spring feeding light and the fall feeding proportionately heavier.
If you live near the southern edge of bluegrass country (see map, page 45), limit yourself to two feedings a year, one in spring and a heavy one in fall. This is because heat makes nitrogen likely to burn the grass, and also, you get disease troubles on over-stimulated midsummer lawns.
In Northern states where it stays cool longer, make four feedings instead of three: March, May, July, and September.
If you use lawn food containing ureaform nitrogen, you don’t need to worry so much about burning from heat, and you need to make only two feedings a year anywhere because the nitrogen is released slowly and each feeding lasts longer.
Some commercial lawn foods contain this new form of nitrogen. The best have half or more of the nitrogen in urea form, and the rest as a quick-acting kind. Apply about 30 pounds of actual total nitrogen per 1000 sq. ft. each year and divide it into two feedings, one in March and one in September.
How To Feed Southern Grasses
Here you judge your actions by the kind of grass you have. Feed bermuda lawns lightly every month or six weeks except in winter. In spring and fall, apply a regular lawn fertilizer containing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash.
Use a low analysis, like 6-6-6, and apply it at a rate of 15 to 20 pounds per 1000 square feet.
The other feedings are usually with straight nitrogen (like ammonium sulfate) applied at seven to eight pounds per 1000 square feet.
Fertilize centipede or carpet grass only once a year—in spring. Feed St. Augustine and zoysia grasses three times a year—in fall, spring, and early summer.
Dichondra lawns benefit from frequent light feedings every two to four weeks from March to September.
Wash all fertilizers in with the hose to keep them from burning the foliage.
Mowing Northern Lawns
On bluegrass lawns, mowing at the right height helps control lawn weeds. It also means better looking through the difficult summer heat and drought days.
In Northern states where bluegrass grows actively in summer, set the mower to cut at 1 to 1 ½” inches.
In the central zone of the bluegrass range, make summer mowing at a medium height of 1 ½” to 2 ½” inches.
In the south of the bluegrass country, high summer mowing is essential to the health of the grass, and to keep out weeds, especially crabgrass. Here, it’s best to mow at a height of 2” to 3” inches.
Cut Merlon bluegrass slightly shorter than other bluegrasses—about 1 ½” to 2” inches.
How Often To Mow
How often to mow depends on how fast the grass is growing. As a rule of thumb, cut whenever grass has grown an inch since the last time.
This could mean in the summer heat, you go three weeks between mowing—but in the big push of spring, you will be mowing every four or five days. So it averages out that you mow once a week.
Mowing Other Grasses
Cut zoysia lawns about 1 ½” inches high; bentgrass ¾” to 1” inch high; Highland bent about 1 ½” inches; bermuda a little under ½” an inch. Cut mixtures of bluegrass and red fescue at bluegrass height.
Normal Rainfall
Normal rainfall seldom furnishes all the water a fine lawn needs. Southern lawns generally need more water than Northern ones. Lawns in the dry West need more irrigation than those of the high rainfall East.
You can’t have a lawn in many arid parts of the West unless you irrigate it. The minimum water a lawn needs is about an inch a week. If this does not come down as rain, provide it with the hose.
Where lawn watering is a regular chore, building an underground sprinkling system is most practical when you first put down the lawn.
Occasional Watering
Where watering is an occasional thing, your tools are the garden hose and various sprinkling devices which you move about. Water early enough in the day to let the grass dry before night.
Once a week is often enough for a particular place, but let the sprinkler run long enough there to give an inch of moisture.
44659 by Elvin Mcdonald